The present disclosure relates generally to agricultural implements, and more specifically to a row unit for a double-shoot disc drill.
Certain agricultural implements, such as disc drills, may be used to open trenches in a soil surface and for placement of an agricultural product, such as seed or fertilizer, in the trenches. A disc drill may have several row units attached to a frame of the disc drill and arranged in a row. This arrangement may form several parallel rows of deposited agricultural product as the disc drill is pulled through a field by a tractor or other prime mover. In some applications, each row unit includes an opener disc configured to excavate a trench into the soil surface, a product chute configured to deposit the agricultural product into the trench, and a packing wheel configured to pack the displaced soil on top of the agricultural product following the deposition of the product.
The distance between the parallel rows of deposited agricultural product may be determined by the separation distance between the row units on the frame. In some situations, it may be useful to reduce the distance between the parallel rows to dimensions smaller than the minimum separation distance between row units (e.g., due to the dimensions of the row units). This may be useful in situations in which an increased crop density may be desired. Reducing the row spacing may also be useful in situations in which fertilizer is deposited into the soil, and the fertilizer is expected to diffuse to the neighboring rows of seeds.
In some disc drills, a second row of staggered row units may be attached to form rows of agricultural product parallel to the rows produced by the first row of row units. For example, each row unit of the second row may be positioned laterally between two adjacent row units of the first row. This second row may form rows of deposited agricultural product when a desired distance between the parallel rows is smaller than the minimum separation distance between disc row units of a single row. Certain disc drills may include a third row of staggered row units to reduce the separation between the parallel rows of deposited product even further. As the number of rows of row units of a disc drill increases, the weight and the dimensions of a disc drill may increase significantly, thereby increasing the complexity of the frame structure of the disc drill and the power sufficient to tow the disc drill.